The BIBA Pod BIBA

The high-net-worth insurance market is facing turbulent times, with the multiple strains of the COVID aftermath, ongoing global conflicts and fluctuating exchange rates causing property values to oscillate significantly.
In this episode, Sarah discusses these issues with iprism Underwriting’s Aaron Woodhams. He suggests that brokers should recommend that their high net-worth clients increase the valuations of their property from every 3-5 years to once every 1-3 to avoid any underinsurance-related losses. Furthermore, he explains how iprism Underwriting remains committed to maintaining consistent policy pricing despite this current economic turbulence, and how they aim to collaborate with brokers in this process. iprism will have a big presence at BIBA Conference this year at stand C64. If you specialise in high-net-worth insurance or have any queries, the iprism team would love to chat with you!
 
Quotes of the Episode
“Getting valuations is so vital, and they're not too expensive. You can start with a straightforward desktop valuation really from £150, up to £1000 for a surveyor coming in and doing a full valuation. So, the prices can vary from a desktop to a full site visit, but I think it'd be the best bit of money you've ever spent. Brokers advising their clients [should] really stress that: the importance of claims inflation. We’ve had COVID, we’ve had the wars going on, we’ve got exchange rates going all over the place (a lot of these things are imported), and the cost factors are just going through the roof. So, the only thing I can suggest is to keep those valuations coming in.”
“Realistically, it'd be very hard for an insurer to decline a claim if [their property had been valued within] one to three years. Morally, the policyholder has done the right thing. If I hadn’t had anything valued for 10 years, you could argue that there could be problems. If, morally, the policyholder is doing the right thing. It'd be very hard for an insurer to decline a claim.”
 
Key Takeaways
Brokers should conduct a full fact-find for their high-net-worth policyholders to ensure valuations are always kept up to date
With indexation at an all-time high of 18%, brokers should recommend that their high-net-worth clients have their property valued every 1-3 years to avoid losses via underinsurance in the event of a claim
Between 70-85% of properties are likely underinsured
iprism Underwriting evolves with changing exposures to provide suitable policies and coverage for brokers to support their policyholders
 
About the Guest
Aaron Woodhams is the Chief Underwriting Officer of iprism Underwriting. Having previously held senior roles at Arch Insurance, Axiom and Allianz, in this position Aaron oversees the day-to-day management of underwriting across all lines of the business, and collaborates with its insurer partners.
Aaron’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-woodhams-dip-cii-9b22a2109/
 
About the Host
Sarah Myerscough is the Chief Ideas Officer at Macaii, formerly Boston Tullis. She hosts/co-hosts several podcasts and is known for her knack in connecting with people. Sarah excels in bringing out the best for video, podcast, and live events, helping clients showcase the human side of their business.
Sarah is passionate about the evolving dynamics of the insurance industry and enjoys conversing with innovators, trailblazers, and long-term advocates of change.
 
Resources
BIBA Conference 2024: https://thebibaconference.org.uk
iprism Underwriting: https://www.iprism.co.uk/

Innovation across any industry inevitably has consequences for the way in which it must be insured. We live in times of great change and uncertainty, with many of our major industries currently being revolutionised either due to changing working habits, climate regulatory pressures or new emergent technologies such as AI. In this episode, Sarah speaks with QBE Insurance’s David Jones about how innovation across an array of industries is creating emerging risks, and how as brokers we can equip our clients against them. For example, the motor and construction industries are both undergoing seismic shifts as they respond to the demands of sustainability and government climate pledges. However, the emergence of lithium-ion batteries and new materials such as cross laminated timber pose significant risks which must be accounted for by brokers and insurers. David asserts that it is crucial for brokers to maintain both a macro and micro perspective on how innovation across different industries may be inadvertently creating new risks for their clients.
 
Quotes of the Episode
“We've got to cast our eye much further into the future. With AI, the challenge there is really difficult to understand and capture. I think we're just trying to work out what it means to us now, as an industry. It has benefits in terms of how we operate, how we process information, how we research and how we transact insurance policies. Those are very near-term benefits. But the future it holds is all around data usage, trends-spotting, and hopefully being a really early warning system to some of the changing risks that we see. So, I think it can probably help us in terms of looking forwards.”
“The advice we'd have for brokers and it’s something QBE aspire to as well, is just getting really close to the frontline, understanding what's impacting our customers, where they're seeing innovation, how they're managing their risk… Just being really close and proximate to the changing risks that are in the short-term, looking after how they approach their business, I think it's really, really important. Also, there's that point that innovation is not just for big companies, it sounds like Gen AI and all of this is really big multinational, global concerns. It's not; all companies are innovating; all companies are impacted by this change. So, recognise, it's on the macro, but also on the more local scale.”
 
Key Takeaways
The insurance industry typically responds to innovation through the rear-view mirror, but we now find ourselves in a very rapidly shifting landscape of change and must account for newly emergent risks
Most non-climate related claims are related to human error in one form or another, which may be affected by blurring of our work and home lives through flexible working
65% of the jobs our children will do don’t yet exist today
When we identify a change in any industry, we must ask ourselves ‘What does it mean for our clients?’
 
About the Guest
David Jones is the Director of Underwriting for Property and Packaged Business at QBE Insurance. In this role, he looks after QBE’s first party lines and commercial package insurance across the UK. He has over 20 years of underwriting experience across various specialisms and risks.
David’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-jones-5b126863/
 
About the Host
Sarah Myerscough is the Chief Ideas Officer at Macaii, formerly Boston Tullis. She hosts/co-hosts several podcasts and is known for her knack in connecting with people. Sarah excels in bringing out the best for video, podcast, and live events, helping clients showcase the human side of their business.
Sarah is passionate about the evolving dynamics of the insurance industry and enjoys conversing with innovators, trailblazers, and long-term advocates of change.
 
Resources
BIBA Conference 2024: https://thebibaconference.org.uk
QBE: https://www.qbe.com/
QBE – The Unpredictability Index: https://qbeeurope.com/news

In this episode, Sarah speaks with Ageas’ Adam Beckett about the rapidly changing motor insurance market. With the looming ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2030, motor manufacturers are racing to expand the sale and accessibility of electric and hybrid vehicles. This presents both a significant challenge and opportunity to the broking market. We must collaborate with industry experts on how to create affordable policies for customers given the differing expenses for electric vehicles. Furthermore, Adam notes that whilst traditional 12-month motor insurance policies will always remain important, there is an emerging trend towards short-term policies purchased on demand at the click of a button. Thus, brokers and insurers alike must be prepared to navigate this highly metamorphic marketplace in the coming years. Ageas will be at BIBA Conference this year at stand D10, adopting the theme of ‘Brilliant Together’. To this end, during the episode Adam emphasises Ageas’ commitment to sustaining the longevity of brokers in the personal lines marketplace.
 
Quotes of the Episode
“I think the challenge is that the broker could well be asked [whilst] supporting the customer with their education and their choice around [electric vehicle] insurance, questions that they don't necessarily feel armed to be able to respond to. The opportunity is, if manufacturers, insurers, etc, can bring that knowledge to brokers, and they can do their own development work about helping people through the decision of purchasing an electric vehicle and everything that goes with it, then they can be a real power base for helping customers to find comfort and to navigate the landscape… The broker… can add some real valuable proposition and service information beyond the provision of the traditional insurance cover.”
“The key message for [Ageas at BIBA Conference] is that we fundamentally believe in the longevity of brokers in the personal lines marketplace. Our business is entirely intermediated. Even our small direct franchise is intermediated through the price comparison websites. Eight or nine tenths of our business comes through the thousands of personal lines brokers that will be in the room at BIBA. We are focused on investing in all the technical capability that we need to: pricing, underwriting, claims management, data analytics, etc, to be able to be a great technical support and panel partner, for those brokers. We’ll leave the very entrepreneurial skill of proposition and distribution and the retailing to the broker, because we fundamentally believe that they have continually shown themselves to be successful.”
 
Key Takeaways
New policies for electric vehicles must be made affordable as they become more widely manufactured and new infrastructure is implemented
Electric vehicle insurance is a huge opportunity for the broking market to give specialised advice
Traditional motor insurance policy models will always remain important, but the market must adapt to new customer habits and behaviours
Driverless vehicles are likely a long way off, but the need for insurance coverage around them will come upon the market quickly
 
About the Guest
Adam Beckett is the Chief Distribution Officer at Ageas UK, who specialise in the motor landscape. He has worked across the general insurance market for around 25 years, and has been at Ageas for the past three. In this role, he is responsible for looking after all distribution channels, and overseeing marketing, proposition development and digital execution.
Adam’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-beckett-6670b352/
 
About the Host
Sarah Myerscough is the Chief Ideas Officer at Macaii, formerly Boston Tullis. She hosts/co-hosts several podcasts and is known for her knack in connecting with people. Sarah excels in bringing out the best for video, podcast, and live events, helping clients showcase the human side of their business.
Sarah is passionate about the

In this episode, Sarah Myerscough is joined by Eleanor Brodie (LexisNexis Risk Solutions) and Joe Lettween (Fortegra), to discuss how AI, machine learning and data science are changing the nature of the insurance industry by reorienting how we collect, interact with and deploy data. They dismiss the notion that AI will soon cut humans out of the equation, or that a generally intelligent AI will emerge in the next few years. Conversely, Joe notes that AI, if implemented effectively, can support humans with forecasting and data analysis without diminishing team headcounts. Eleanor suggests that AI can be used to smoothen the customer journey significantly by assessing customer habits and introducing conversational chatbot assistants. All this must be underpinned by a wealth of data. As off-the-shelf machine learning models become increasingly accessible over the next few years, it is key that smaller businesses have a breadth of data to feed into them, to achieve great outcomes for themselves and their customers.
 
Quotes of the Episode
“We aren't at a generally useful tool [that can] just handle any insurance task. So, each of these discrete units of work, you have to kind of build a bespoke tool, even if it's a general LLM like Chat GPT, you still have to box it in and make sure that you're doing the correct product engineering, and [that] you've engineered a pipeline that makes it respond to only your document. So, you have to find the areas where it's giving you either uplift and efficiency, or insights that would take a long time for a human to generate this… We don't put the decision in the hands of the tool. We support the human.”
“If you don't have a data trust that's organised in a way that's like useful or easy for folks to access, whether that’s within your firm, or if you're trying to work across firms, that's going to materially inhibit your ability to use the tools. They do not know anything about your particular business, about your customers, about your software, about your decisions, without an input. The better the input, the better decision tools you're gonna get; the better automations you're gonna get. So, you have to start thinking about every interaction as an opportunity to collect data. And you have to think about every opportunity to collect data as an opportunity to get higher resolution data.”
 
Key Takeaways
AI is currently being used across the insurance chain to support human interaction and drive efficiency, but not to replace people
AI can revolutionise the customer journey; via segmented marketing, curated communications and chatbots delivering ‘human-like’ responses
AI will soon become accessible to a less skilled, less technical set of users, as large firms develop wholesale data science tools
With these new tools entering the market, data remains absolutely crucial. What data can you pull from every customer interaction, and how might you store it in an easily referenceable way?
 
 About the Guests
Eleanor Brodie is a Data Science Manager with LexisNexis Risk Solutions for the UK and Ireland market. In this role she helps customers unlock the value of their data, and to incorporate that knowledge into their workflows. Lexus Nexus also assess new data sources and build tools to supplement AI and machine learning models for insurers and brokers.
Eleanor’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eleanor-brodie/
 
Joe Lettween is the Chief Innovation, Data Science and Technology Officer for Fortegra, a delegated authority carrier, where he has worked since November 2022. He will be attending BIBA Conference this year and looks forward to meeting new people and discussing the future of AI and underwriting.
Joe’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-lettween-3996a03/
 
About the Host
Sarah Myerscough is the Chief Ideas Officer at Macaii, formerly Boston Tullis. She hosts/co-hosts several podcasts and is known for her knack in connecting with people.

In this episode Sarah is joined by Claire Russell, Mental Health in Business (MHIB), and BIBA’s very own Neil Jenkinson, to discuss the everchanging hormones in our bodies. Together they share their personal experiences and what they are doing to help turn a ‘midlife crisis’ into a ‘midlife balance’. MHIB deliver menopause training and Claire is a part of the menopause experts group so is able to give an additional professional perspective. They also discuss what businesses can do to support employees during this time of their life.
 
Quotes of the Episode
“We're all humans and we all have an endocrine system that creates hormones. Those hormones are responsible for pretty much every function that happens in the body and mind. Whether we are biologically male or biologically female, all of us will go through changes throughout our lives during puberty and midlife. So I think it's important that we have that overarching view and we understand that hormones affect all of us in different ways and at different points in our lives.” Claire Russell, MHIB
 
“Because everybody has struggles in the morning, getting up and putting the game face on and going to work. Sometimes you really just don't feel like doing it. But you do it. You know, because you're a professional and you get on with your job and you get on with your life and maybe your family life as well. So I think there has been a huge benefit for me on this journey, which is nowhere near the end, but I do think that there were signs there. I just didn't want to acknowledge them and I remember sort of hiding behind it.” Neil Jenkinson, BIBA
 
Key Takeaways 
Everyone has hormones and throughout life they fluctuate but there are things you can do to feel better.
There are clear differences between the Menopause and Andropause but symptoms can be similar.
It is important to push for the help you feel you need, whether that is through the NHS or privately.
There are a number of ways businesses can support employees through their midlife, including Employee Assistance Programs and Mental Health First Aiders.
About the guests
Claire is the Founder & CEO of Mental Health in Business, her vision is to lead a global shift in mental health in the workplace. With her personal lived experience of mental ill health, and losing her partner to suicide in 2018; she is passionate about helping to effect change, break down taboos and open up the conversation about mental health. She is a (youth and adult) mental health first aid instructor, a suicide awareness and intervention trainer and creator of multiple mental health training programs.
Neil went straight into insurance from school and has held many roles, mostly broker facing, over the last 35 years. He has built longstanding relationships and friendships working in the industry. Neil now works at BIBA as a Regional Manager in the commercial team with the aim to engage with members and regional committees.
 
About the Host
Sarah Myerscough is the Sales and Marketing Director of Boston Tullis Group. The founder of The Insurance Brokers Podcast, she brings a wealth of experience and a fresh perspective on communication in the insurance sector. Boston Tullis works with insurance professionals to build effective communication both internally and externally through podcasting, event reporting, videography, and internal communications facilitation.
 
Resources
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/menopause/
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/male-menopause/
https://mhib.co.uk/
https://thebibaconference.org.uk/
 

In this episode Sarah is joined by Baljinder Mahil, Axa, and Enam Islam, Jenzah Consulting Ltd, to explore how insurance is more inclusive than ever before. Both Bal and Enam are passionate members of iCAN, a Lloyds partner network, encouraging cultural diversity industry wide. They also discuss the future of the industry and how Enam works with schools in Manchester to make insurance a career option for school leavers. Listen to their experiences, enthusiasm and advice.
 
Quotes of the Episode
“We have different partner networks that focus on different cultures and different events. I think we need to do that to a certain extent and we've been doing that really well for the last two, three years. I've definitely seen an uptake in events internally and externally within our sector. I think where we can really unlock more change is the intersectionality. So if we join these things together, that's not just different protected characteristics, but also the different ethnic groups, we'll be able to have almost like a multiplied effect. We'll be looking at those similarities. Because there are similarities there, even though we have our differences. We're more the same than we are different and I think that's how we will unlock the next changes in the in the industry. I think that's how we'll showcase that diversity and inclusion.” Baljinder Mahil, Axa XL
 
“What is it that we want for the next generation? When I look at my children, when I look at my nieces and nephews or the young children that I mentor, is what do I want them to achieve? And more importantly, what is it they want to achieve? They want stability, they want the opportunity to travel, they want to become technical experts, they want to earn a lot of money. Insurance can cater to that in many ways, it's about showing them that perspective of insurance. Where it's not the call centre, sitting at a desk but travelling around, meeting people like yourself, doing podcasts, or attending the Gen Z conference. I took 50 students from local colleges to The BIBA Conference and the feedback I got was, ‘it was amazing’, ‘it was so innovative’, ‘there was so many interesting things going on’. It's that perception that we need to change. I think that is probably the overarching strategy and everything else is action points.” Enam Islam, Jenzah Consulting Ltd
 
Key Takeaways 
How they joined the industry and the experiences they have had.
Cultural differences that you might not consider in the workplace.
The industry is more diverse that it used to be and internal company groups like the one Bal set up at Axa and external ones like iCAN are showcasing this.
Changing the perception of insurance is critical to encouraging young people to join- it isn’t boring!
About the guests
Bal has had a number of varied and interesting roles spanning the technology and insurance industry. Her depth of knowledge across data and systems has delivered positive outcomes for both the business and ultimately the client and brokers. In January 2020 Bal was appointed Head of Distribution Operations and supports the Data, Strategy and Governance across the distribution channels. She also co-founded and co-chairs Rise, the first multi-cultural network group at AXA XL, focused on the development and inclusion of historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. It’s support led to the company publishing their first Ethnicity Pay Gap Report in 2021. Bal was named in the Empower Top 100 Ethnic Minority Executive Role Model list in 2022.
Director of Jenzah Consulting Ltd, with more than 15 years of experience in the Insurance and Reinsurance industry. Enam has a strong desire to promote diversity and inclusivity, particularly for individuals from a BAME background. Apart from his professional achievements, Enam holds the position of Chairman for a local youth organisation, where he plays a crucial role in guiding and empowering young people to reach their full potential.